I can't believe you compared Love and Monsters to the brilliance that was Kinda Kinda was for me the best story of the Davison era, and even a serious contender for the best Who story ever! Love and Monsters..well, I've said my piece on that. Suffice it to say if there is as you say a hidden story under the surface that is worth watching then it was hidden too well for me.

I like how alot of people are picking the doctor-lite episodes. Blink and Turn Left..

Mine is also turn left.... well most of series 4... and series 2... i love em all and series 1.. lol and series 3 to a point... LOL I can't pick!

What a silly thread: there have been no good episodes of "New Who". Well, not if you believe certain people on this forum, anyway...

But I can't really pick out a favourite, not even from each series! So my top 3 from each are:

S1:

Rose
The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances
Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways

S2:

Tooth & Claw
The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit
The Army of Ghosts/Doomsday

S3:

Gridlock
Human Nature/The Family of Blood
Utopia/The Sound of Drums/The Last of the Time Lords (I'm counting that as a 3-part, single story!)

S4:

Planet of the Ood
Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead
Stolen Earth/Journey's End

Agree....have to say I think I will very much miss that....


I loved the first couple of episodes of series 4....the only ones to make me cry the first time I watched them, and still do....compared to the earlier episodes of the earlier series'



You just need to dig deeper

Yea I just think the start of Series 4 was... slow. Partners in Crime was a nice opening. Fires of Pompeii was good. The Visuals for the Volcano were stunning and Donna had a good story in it. I remember at the time though I didn't like the idea that the Doctor should suppress his Darker side and that he "needs someone to stop him". I remember looking back at Runaway Bride with the Children of Aracnoss and the way he dispatched the Family of Blood. We need to see more of that because they were excellent scripts. If we lose that, majestic and authoritative side to the Doctor than we lose some of the greatest aspects of the Doctor. Let me put it this way: We don't want him to lose the "Lord" in Time Lord.

Planet of the Ood - Well I'm sorry but I just thought that was boring! Neither am I fond of Unicorn and the Wasp. Not that I think it's a bad episode. I just don't like it. Which doesn't make sense it's just how I feel. But the rest of the series gets a whole lot better in my view.

Your right.....it is slow....but so were the first episodes of series 1, 2, and 3......its always like that.....as the series comes to a close, it picks up in pace, scares and epicness....so its quite pointless to compare the beggining to the end....the start of the series always tries to attract new audiences...and set up in a way that doesn't make casual viewers feel that they should have watched the previous series....maybe give them a taster and feel to watch it....but never compell them...unlike Lost or something like that would....
But the last couple of episodes up their game, as it feels more settled, the arcs start coming to a close, and those who stuck with the series are treated in some form or another.....and the stories get darker.....

As for the Doctor and his darkness......well that is a story arc in itself....and would get boring, and very un-Doctor like if he went round punishing everyone in every story....its good when we see it, because its rare.....knowing that there is this side of the Doctor...that comes out sometimes in the most extreme cases...or when he feels he has no choice.....

Again....as different tastes go....I thought POTO was quite Dark.....for an early episode.....and Unicorn and the Wasp was brave and brilliant.......

Yeah, 'Kinda' is just great, isn't it? And, strictly speaking, you can compare anything to anything, tho' be clear I wasn't trying to rank one above the other. Dunno how I'd actually place them, now you come to mention it...


Heh, fair enough - different strokes for different folks and all that.

The thing I admire most about 'Love & Monsters' is just the extraordinary economy in which Davies sets up his characters (the LINDA crowd especially), to the point where I found myself caring and empathising with them even tho' they'd had, what, 2 minutes of screen-time.

To me, that's just remarkable writing, and it's just, like, classic back-to-basics stuff as Davies create drama by putting them in peril, then evokes audience emotion by bumping them all off, apart from Elton, obviously...

Really worked for me, but, obviously, if it's not your kind of Who tale, then that's cool. For sure, it's a divisive episode.

Regards,

Cypher

I disagree firstly that the first few stories of Series 1 2 and 3. They were just far more interesting. I'm not trying to discredit the Ood at all though. I just think that they were used far better in the TIP/TSP 2 parter. We didn't see anything new this time round. I think each of the episodes in this series have their strengths that we can point out. The Ood Song for example and the effect it had on Donna as well as how close the Doctor and Donna got to being Ood-ified.

But even with that overall it just doesn't rank high on my list of favourite episodes.

Personally from my point of view the Carrionites were just as scary as the weeping angels toward the end of Series 3 and the Shakespeare Episode wasn't slow at all although we're still having to get to know Martha a bit. Despite that it was a very dark episode.


I'm not suggesting we see it every episode. I was just expressing my displeasure that we may lose it completely. David Tennant pulls it off expertly. What I don't like is the way he is always willing to sacrifice himself whenever he like you put it thinks he has no choice. It would never ever come to that of course because of the script but I just find myself thinking why is he always so... suicidal. We came close to losing him when the Sontarans were destroyed. But I'll never forget that moment when Luke teleported to the Sontaran ship. They stopped chanting when in that little moment they realised they'd been tricked into a "meaningless" death.

The Master Trilogy for me. The best episodes are where the odds are stacked so high that you really believe the Doctor might fail. Also it was Marthas finest hour (erm you know what I mean) and for me that made her the best companion of the returned show.
Second for me would be THe Empty Child/Doctor Dances double purely for the perfection of the script and the cast.
And getting the bronze would be The Unquiet Dead- a seemingly forgotten gem

But again, that is who the Doctor is.....not the one we see in the Runaway Bride, or the Family of Blood.....but the one that is willing to give his life up in order to save the universe....and not only that he makes others do that too...hence the whole revealing of the soul in JE.....
The Doctor's Dark side is hidden and not lost at all....we see that nearly come out in the Ood episode, where he seem to show through his behaviour that he felt that Mr Helpen deserved to be turned into an Ood...which led to Donna wondering that she doesn't know what is right or wrong anymore......we also see it in the Doctor's Daughter, where he comes close to shooting the commander.....


Also I don't necessarily think he is suicidal that much in series 4, compared to series 3......where his loss of Rose, makes him feel that he has lost everything again.....in series 4, he is more hoping that he will be able to threaten the monsters into doing what he wants, but not really wanting to die....

As for the Ood story in series 4.....it was about the Ood, and their story, about how they came to be slaves, and how they earned their freedom.....in the Satan two parter they were nothing else but slaves for humans first and then the satan....so for me POTO is definitely adding a lot more new things.....

For me TSC was a fun episode....not scary one bit, and not dark either....while FOP while mostly fun as well, and again not scary, had issues of conflict for the Doctor that challenged him, and Donna.....the idea that the Doctor had to choose between causing the volcano to erupt, or allow the Earth to be taken over by the Pyrovilles.....the fact that he had to cause one of the most horrific environmental tragedies in history.....that is more darker than anything in TSC.....

For me I love Gridlock more than POTO.....but the latter isn't far behind, because for me both have layers of subtext, but POTO is still darker in its story, with the themes of concentration camps and slavery going on.....

Smith and Jones is fun....and so is PIC.....however, PIC makes me cry now everytime I watch it, as well as making me laugh......

And the Sontaran two parter is for me better structured than the Dalek two parter of series three......


So in balance for me Series 4 wins hands down if looking at just the first 5 episodes....with only Gridlock really taking the award from me in series 3 of being equal to series 4, and series 2, only Tooth and Claw, and School Reunion really stand out...and series 1...well apart from Rose and the Unquiet Dead....the other three episodes are very weak (but still love them though) compared to series 4....

I think Human Nature/Family Of Blood and Blink were lightyears ahead of everything else is series 3. Series 4 was more consistently good than 3.

Having said that my fave is still The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. So many great moments, "everybody lives," the best outing of Captain Jack, the scene when Jack thinks he'll die and gives his goodbye speech and then the camera pans back and we see the TARDIS, superb cliffhanger resolution at the start of episode 2, creepy like Doctor Who should be. Just wonderful.

Only just behind that is Blink, the cleverest episode the show ever did and only just behind that Human Nature/Family Of Blood. So many great moments but the punishments he dished out to the family showed The Doctor in a powerful, dangerous light. Bloody chilling!!

I was disappointed in The Unicorn and the Wasp as however well it was done I was hoping for a straight historical story like we used to get with a clever twist instead of the cop-out alien element, which is what we get every time now.

Out of interest....and not being rude or anything I promise.....what stories are you referring to?

Either Blink and the Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. They were both really well written and so imaginative. And to the person who mentioned Love and Monsters - I think that it deserves a mention too, because it was so different than the typical sort of stuff you get in cult TV these days. I loved it. And the main character in that episode (I can't remember his name at all) was great, a great actor =D

But even if that's true the Doctor got rid of Rose because he was supposed to look after his part Time Lord Double. He's passed judgement on Cassandra the Trampoline (lol oops I meant last human) Aracnoss, Dalek Caan, The Family of Blood, and some of these and more are after his adventures with Rose which were supposed to have made him "better". But he has never got rid of that side.

There was no reason for Rose or Jackie to go back. If Rose really was good for Doc 10.5 couldn't she have done the same job in our universe? Or would that have hurt the Doctor too much?

I think he was. The whole arc for me was about The Doc's relationship with Martha. He was clearly still hurting over Rose hense his.. cruel treatment of Martha. Because he was cruel and he basically treated her like dirt. It went on for half the series before he finally accepted her as companion. He did finally build a friendship with Martha which I think helped him become a better person.

But he puts himself in those situations all the time. There's always a better way for him then to put his own life on the line. Martha pointed it out before he faced the Sontarans.

I could go on and on forever about why I think series 3 is better but that would take forever and I think it's for another thread. Maybe it's just the fact that by the middle of Series 3 I wasn't just interested in Doctor Who... I became an obsessed fan. With Series 4 I was faced with stories that just didn't enthuse me in the same way.

For instance no opening quite scared me (which is what I look for in Who) in quite the same way as the Carrionites in Shakespeare Code. Even though i've watched it to death it gets me every time.

I think he abandond Rose because he could never really give her what she wants.....and I am okay with those views that say he got rid of a clingy GF.....
But on a serious note, when he is talking about Rose making him better, he is talking about his Ninth Self.....yes as the Tenth, he did do ruthless things too, (but moreso after the loss of Rose, which made him angry, hence why Donna said he needed sombody)....but when with Martha and Donna, there were times he managed to calm himself....moreso with Donna, as I feel she really did understand him......so technically he could have left 10.2 with either of those, but they wouldn't want him, but Rose, at least in his eyes, would....and like you said, it would hurt him moreso, if they were in the same universe....her being in a parallel one, gives him closure......



In the Sontaran one, he does put himself in that situation, but as we know again he doesn't have a choice either, if he didn't go up they would have blown Earth up, but at the same time he didn't want to kill them without giving them the choice....as much as possible, he tries to give them one chance, in fact he does the same with the Racnoss, and the the family of blood, who he becomes Human to avoid punishing.......the punishing side is a dark side that he doesn't like......and that is what makes episodes like Human Nature so good, because its rare that it comes out....

I agree that he is awful to Martha.......not going to disagree on that.....but in TSC that is more played in the sense of childish behaviour on his part "your a novice" or "Rose would know".....not dark moments....just stupid and childish, and very man like moments......that hardly compares to his decision of having to kill the people of Pompeii in order to save the whole Universe.....and the abandoning of the family that Donna wants him to save.....



I am glad you like series 3.....so do I....for me its very close behind to series 4....and I have a feeling that after the big moments of series 3 and admittedly , they were huge....I think your expectations were high....and as I never expected the first couple of episodes from series 4 to give the likes of Utopia/Blink and Human Nature a run for their Money....I was more than pleasently suprised, as they turned out to be high standerd stories compared to the first few of Series 1, 2, and 3...


But in the end, its horses for courses, however always interesting to see why though......plus as I am someone who loves Love and Monsters (one of the most hated stories of New Who) I don't expect you to agree with me....I just wanted to share what I think that is all....

Granted they were mostly a long time ago, but with The Romans, The Crusade, The French Revolution, The Massacre, Marco Polo, The Aztecs, The Myth Makers, and more recently Black Orchid, there was clever writing, using mistaken identity and circumstances without alien intervention. The nearest to the current trend was Masque of Mandragora which was half 'real historical story' half Helix energy. I just wish they'd done Pompeii, Shakespeare and The Unicorn and the Wasp 'straight' instead of with an alien sub-plot. History's fascinating enough without any help, to me anyway.

I can see your point....it would be interesting to see an out and out historical episode....but so far, I have loved all the alien twists on the ones that I have seen, so I am not against that idea either....I loved how the Ghost accepts of Dickens world are Gas aliens......and I love how for Shakespeare, the witches were not actually witches, of magical form, but an actual species......where the so called magic, is actually a form of sceince.....and as for the UATW, well as I see it as a story to take the twists and turns of Christies books and story telling style, rather than an historical...and turn it into a Doctor Who story....which is what I love about it.....as for Pompeii....it would have been interesting to see the Doctor and Donna, maybe just get caught up in the events....however, due to the alien sub-plot, it became a story of the Doctor having to cause the historical destruction of Pompeii.....

But saying that I am again not against the idea of it being just completley historical.....but I do find it quite clever, even if quite common now to turn it into an alien sub-plot as well as being historical......

There are so,so,so many to choose from. But i must say The Stolen Earth is gotta be one of ma top favourites. Was fast paced, had some suprises, and when it got to the part where they are all trying to call the Doctor and everything onward, it kept me on the edge of my seat, especially when the Doc regenerated

[quote=crazzyaz7;33221304]....I loved how the Ghost accepts of Dickens world are Gas aliens......QUOTE]

I forgot about Dickens, and I did enjoy that one very much as it was, it worked like Mandragora did, and the Visitation, it's just that aliens being involved or responsible for everything that happened seems to be an easy option and it would be more interesting, especially for the companions (and it was originally intended to be an educational adventure programme) to just see straight time travel. I still want to see how come the Doctor was being taught to fight by Cleopatra's bodyguard, and what he did to upset Queen Elizabeth 1...